McGovern, a strong man who overcame defeat

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George McGovern dies at age 90

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Bob Greene lunched with George McGovern after the senator's failed presidential bid

He says McGovern wondered then whether his campaign had seemed doomed to reporters

He says some called McGovern soft, but he was a valorous WW II combat pilot; also a good guy

Greene: McGovern was surrounded by home, friendship when he died Sunday

Pat Nixon had taken Mamie Eisenhower out to lunch. This was in the summer of 1973; the wife of one president and the widow of another talked quietly in the dining room of the United States Senate.

I had traveled to Washington to cover the Senate Watergate hearings, which of course centered on the first lady's husband, and I had unexpectedly been invited to lunch by the other person at my table, which was just a few feet from where Mrs. Nixon and Mrs. Eisenhower were eating.

"What did you think?" George McGovern asked me. He drank a cup of coffee and waited for his omelet to arrive. "When you were riding the planes and looking at the crowds every day, did you think we'd lost it?"

Only one year before, he had been traveling the country campaigning nonstop, the Democratic candidate for president. He had hoped to be living in the White House. Now, in that summer of '73, having suffered a landslide defeat at the hands of Richard Nixon, he was a U.S. senator who had just come out of a routine and dreary agriculture subcommittee meeting which had lasted all morning and would resume after the lunch break.

"Did you think we never had a chance from the convention on?" McGovern asked.

The Nixon-McGovern campaign had been my first. McGovern had done his best to get to know the people assigned to cover him, even the neophytes, so I had been pleased that a year after his defeat he would take the time to get a bite to eat with me.

Photos: George McGovern's career 8 photos

Photos: George McGovern's career8 photos

George McGovern's political career – Former Sen. George McGovern, 90, died on Sunday morning. McGovern was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972. He ran against incumbent Richard Nixon and won only 17 electoral votes to Nixon's 520. He served in the U.S. Senate and House representing South Dakota before his loss for the top office. Pictured, McGovern attends the 2011 funeral service for Sargent Shriver, his 1972 running mate.

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Photos: George McGovern's career8 photos

George McGovern's political career – Sen. George McGovern campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in August 1968. Vice President Hubert Humphrey beat McGovern for the party's nomination that year and lost in the general election to Richard Nixon.

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Photos: George McGovern's career8 photos

George McGovern's political career – McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee, right, and his first running mate, Sen. Thomas Eagleton, campaign in 1972. Eagleton withdrew from the ticket after it came to light that he had received electric shock treatment for bouts of mental illness.

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Photos: George McGovern's career8 photos

George McGovern's political career – McGovern, left, chose Sargent Shriver as his running mate to replace Eagleton in August 1972.

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George McGovern's political career – McGovern speaks at an event in January 1984.

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George McGovern's political career – Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, left, talks with McGovern while both testify before the Congressional Progressive Caucus on the McGovern-Polk Plan for U.S. Military Disengagement from Iraq in January 2007.

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George McGovern's political career – Murtha, left, listens to McGovern testify before the Congressional Progressive Caucus forum on U.S. military involvement in Iraq in January 2007.

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George McGovern's political career – McGovern attends the 40th American Film Institute Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Shirley MacLaine in June 2012.

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EXPAND GALLERY

He died on Sunday at age 90 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the same town where he had made his concession speech to Nixon on a cold November night 40 years ago. In the sometimes unforgiving world of political acrimony -- left vs. right, conservative vs.liberal -- it is easy to reduce national candidates to cartoon figures. But whatever anyone may have thought of McGovern's ideology, he was an awfully good guy. And for those who casually categorized him as "soft," as his political opponents sometimes did, I always offer the suggestion: Unless you flew 35 World War II combat missions over Nazi-occupied Europe as the pilot of a B-24 bomber, as he did, and were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for your valor, as he was, maybe you ought to hold up a little bit before you offhandedly call a man like McGovern soft.

"Because it was the crowds that convinced me that the polls were wrong," McGovern was saying at lunch. "I simply couldn't conceive that the crowds could be so big and enthusiastic, and that the polls could be so drastically negative at the same time. That's the one thing that still puzzles me a little."

The setting for this conversation bordered on the surreal. McGovern had spent that whole doomed campaign trying in vain to convince the country that he, not Nixon, should be president. Now, in the Senate Dining Room, not only were Mrs. Nixon and Mrs. Eisenhower sitting across the way, but also at nearby tables having lunch were three men who were gaining enormous celebrity as members of the Watergate committee, which was in the midst of holding its nationally televised hearings in the Senate Caucus Room: Sam Ervin of North Carolina, Howard Baker of Tennessee and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. The country's eyes were riveted on them every day, on every broadcast network.

"No, I really haven't watched the Watergate hearings too much," McGovern said. "Oh, once in a while when I go into the Senate cloakroom the TV set in there is turned on, and I watch it for a few minutes. But I don't watch the reruns at night. It's kind of hard for me to watch the hearings anyway; I guess I feel a little more personally involved in what they're about than most people do."

The night before, he told me, he had been invited to a party at which President Nixon had also been a guest. It was the first time he had encountered Nixon in person since the election. In the receiving line, when the two had come face to face, both men smiled broadly, if uneasily, and news photographers snapped pictures of the moment.

"As soon as I was invited to that party," McGovern said, "I knew the situation was going to come up. ... I didn't think that was the picture they'd take. There was another time when Nixon and (then-National Security Adviser Henry) Kissinger and I were all going to be standing together, and I figured that was the picture they'd take. ... What did people expect me to do when I got to Nixon? Do this?"

McGovern scowled comically and began waving his finger in the air, as if scolding Nixon.

"Couldn't very well do that," he said, laughing.

The news stories about McGovern's passing said that death came to him at the Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls. When I saw that, I had a feeling. I looked it up.

A man named Bill Dougherty was one of McGovern's dear South Dakota friends. He had risen to the position of lieutenant governor of the state; he was with McGovern to offer consolation on that night in Sioux Falls when the election results came in.

Dougherty died in 2010; the hospice facility was named in his honor.

So McGovern spent the last days of his life back in South Dakota, within the welcoming walls of a building bearing the name of his old friend. Home, and friendship: sustaining and real in a way that vote totals and lofty titles can never compete with. If you're lucky, that is. George McGovern was.